![\"Stella](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/a29470b4ad53584a723abda01a1012dacc-gayle-king.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n Photo: Marc Piasecki\/WireImage\n <\/p>\n
I will be thinking about Gayle King<\/a> catching her (now) ex-husband, William Bumpus, \u201cboinking around\u201d with her (now) ex-friend for the rest of my life. King appeared on Call Her Daddy on Wednesday and spent a sizable chunk of the interview talking about this incident in visceral detail. Though she has mentioned it\u00a0before \u2014 in a 2016 Vanity Fair<\/a> interview she quipped, \u201cI\u2019m not a huge fan of the woman I caught naked with my now ex-husband on June 24, 1990, at 9:16 p.m.\u201d \u2014 she has never painted quite as clear a picture as she did on CHD.\u00a0We thank her for her service.<\/p>\n The way King described it to Alex Cooper, the circumstances in which she caught her husband cheating could have been written by Nora Ephron. King apparently came home from the airport unexpectedly early, with her two toddler sons in tow, and found that the house alarm was on, a detail she found odd. Then Bumpus came \u201cflying out of the room\u201d wearing nothing but a towel. \u201cHe goes, \u2018You can\u2019t come in,\u2019\u201d King said. Bumpus apparently told her that \u201csomeone\u201d was in the house, so King started searching and eventually found her friend \u201ccowering behind the door\u201d wearing King\u2019s nice bath sheet. This lady \u2014 who King described as a close friend \u2014 apparently had the gall to tell King that Bumpus was only with her for the kids and because King could pay his Yale Law School tuition.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The layers of disrespect in this story continue to pile up. At this point, King had left the kids with the nanny, but because no one has disabled the house alarm, the police showed up. Knowing nothing about the bath sheets or the betrayals, the cops\u2019 first reaction was to ask King, then a local news anchor, for her autograph. Then Bumpus decided to take the girlfriend home so they could still hide the affair from her husband, because he felt they had a \u201cgood marriage.\u201d Sure.<\/p>\n King told Cooper that she wasn\u2019t planning to tell the other husband about the affair until she talked to Oprah Winfrey, the true hero of this tale. \u201c[Winfrey] said, \u2018Well, fuck him. Call her husband,\u2019\u201d King said. But when she did, she found that the girlfriend had beaten her to the punch. The husband apparently told King his wife already said \u201cthat you came home early unexpectedly and you drew the wrong conclusion.\u201d He then told her she was delusional (again, all according to King), even after she mentioned the girlfriend\u2019s pink silk pajama top and mint-green panties in her bed. I know.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, King did get back together with Bumpus for a while before divorcing him for good, which was incredibly frustrating for Winfrey. The good news is that King saw Bumpus at their grandchild\u2019s christening just a day before filming this very CHD episode\u00a0and, according to her, \u201cHe ain\u2019t looking so good.\u201d And scene.<\/p>\n So how does Bumpus feel about King\u2019s side of events? Well, he is sort of sorry. In 2016, after King shared that tidbit with Vanity Fair, Bumpus publicly apologized<\/a> \u201cfor the major transgression that dramatically changed all of our lives.\u201d As a member of the public, I don\u2019t know if I can forgive him at this point. Mint-green panties? Come on.<\/p>\n Stay in touch.<\/p>\n The latest in style, self, culture, and power in your inbox.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n